From Place to Place

From Miami to Pittsburgh the news is constantly informing people. Even thought the basics all seems to be the same there are several Differences from region to region. I recently traveled to Miami for vacation. Now normally on vacation I don't spend my time pouring over the local news, but when there are flood watches and you are on the beach the best thing to keep you updated is the local news. I also grabbed a newspaper in the morning for leisurely reading so I would say I got a nice fill of news while I was on vacation.
Of all the things I read there was one thing that stuck out in my mind. This was the culture of the newspaper and TV. I understand that I live in a very small town with a very specific audience and a limited cultural span. However I have lived in a Atlanta and seen the differences between the two. There is much more of a cultural aspect to the news . Obviously there are more people in the city and therefore there are many more events to choose from. Also Atlanta is an international hub in the united States and so the audience is much wider then it is here. One thing that I notice when i watch the news or read the Atlanta Journal Constitution compared to the New Castle news a lot of the focus is on the community versus the schools. Here is western PA a lot of the news stems from what is going on at the schools ... plays, sports community service. For a small town like New Wilmington much of the news deals with the college campus. Even though New castle is down the road what is going on with the young adults and students in schools and out of schools is a big part of the newspaper... well that and obituaries. The audiences are older in PA compared to Atlanta. Atlanta is more hip and younger. The audiences are more interested in what events are going on compared to the going on of a school. There is also more crime and such in a city but that is mostly population based. Even when the audiences are different there is a big cultural difference. While her in New Wilmington we might mention Kwanzaa or the Hanukkah, in Atlanta they will have articles upon articles about it. The audience is more interested in those sorts of things whereas in PA they are not.

So you can tell the difference between a big city and a small town media but what really stuck me in when I went to Miami is the fact that they had essentially two different newspapers in one. What do I mean by this? Well, the newspaper was a full paper and then it had a duplicate of the same paper just in Spanish. Now there are a lot of Spanish, Mexicans, Koreans and Chinese in Atlanta but never have I seen the morning paper delivered with two different languages. And is is the audience of the media because they had various all Spanish channels as well as English. I must say I have never been in a place in America where I didn't understand the lady in the McDonald's .. they all spoke Spanish and I was so very confused. But the Newspaper was the part that surprised me the most.
After sitting back and taking a look at all of this I realized how beneficial it would be to have a background in another cultural and possibly be bilingual. I always thought that understanding other cultures were important but you really don't think about it until something like a bilingual newspaper swings your way. It makes you think about the benefits learning different cultures.